


you who fly with them / you who are neither before nor after

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post Finale, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 11:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Who are you?" Olivia asks. / "My name is September."</em>
</p>
<p>2015, seen from two different timelines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you who fly with them / you who are neither before nor after

**Author's Note:**

> Content and other notes on this story, including a proposed way to read it, are at the bottom. I'm very grateful to Sal and Macadamanaity for their comments, and forthwritten for their very helpful suggestions.

The white tulip sits on the refrigerator, next to one of Etta’s paintings and a shopping list (eggs, apples, half and half). It has been sitting there through the autumn, a silent witness to a futile search. Peter is sitting on the frozen ground, with his knees drawn up in front of him, looking into the middle distance. 

“Are you all right, young man?” 

Peter comes back to himself to face a woman of around Walter’s age, neat and proper in her hat and coat. Making a regular weekend visit to the cemetery, Peter guesses, but dressed for the occasion every time. “Uh, I’m fine, thanks,” he tells her. “Waiting for someone.” 

She nods, gravely. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says, before drifting away. Peter nods in answer, unsure of how to reply and glad when she doesn’t turn back to look at him: there is too much weight of explanation. 

Olivia appears about half an hour later, walking across the cemetery with the careful, methodical approach of the trained investigator. For a minute, Peter resents that in this moment he has become that for her - something to be solved - and then thinks better of it. He must lay it all out, take away any mystery. 

“Hey,” he says, and she smiles at him and reaches out to grip his hand. For a moment he thinks she’s going to help him up, but then she sits down beside him, cross-legged, close. They sit there for a while in silence. 

“Where’s Etta?” Peter asks at last. 

“With Astrid,” Olivia says, quietly. “She came right over when I asked. She said they were going for strawberry milkshakes.” 

Peter smiles involuntarily at the image, and abruptly sighs. “I guess… I guess I should tell you why I’m here.” 

Olivia nods, and squeezes his hand. “I can’t make you tell me,” she says after a moment. “But I think we should do this together, whatever it is.” 

Peter nods, slowly, and then takes his hand back, uplifts his palms in supplication to the open sky. It’s a cloudless day, the sun burning off the morning fog. “Walter’s not here,” he says at last. “But he’s been missing before, and I thought maybe...” 

He trails off. 

“This was somewhere to look for him,” Olivia says. “I understand that.” She pauses. “Do you believe Walter is dead?” 

It’s the first time anyone has asked him that, and Peter gives the question the consideration it deserves. “No,” he says at last. “But the tulip… I don’t think he’s ever coming back, Olivia. I think he sent it to me for a reason. I don’t know what we tell Etta, but…” 

“We tell her the truth.” On that, Olivia has perfect clarity. “About everything, when the time comes.” 

“Even…” Peter gestures behind him, not willing to turn around. Olivia, who is not afraid of anything, stands up, turns around and takes a good look before settling back in beside him. Peter has seen the headstone before, but has never let his gaze linger on it: it gives him an untethered feeling within, as though he read a fairy story as a child and years later came across the body of the dragon. He can’t decide, even now, whether it was a betrayal or a salvation or a theft of nails from the cross. “Even that?” 

“Beats how babies are made.” Olivia chuckles, and Peter reaches out and squeezes her hand and is for the hundredth time, so glad they’ve made it through everything together. 

“Shall we go?” she asks. “It’s getting cold.” 

Peter nods, and they get to their feet still hand-in-hand. As they walk across the frosted cemetery, Peter is palpably aware of Walter’s absence, as though the space he ought to occupy is a living thing, and of the coffin that must still be there, the tiny bones now scoured clean by earth.

| 

September is sick. There is a hollowness to the sky that he can’t bear to look at, there is something unseen wracking through his body that feels like the passage of a breaking wave but manifests as a cough, hacking and bubbling through his lungs, making him fall to his knees in the snow so his hat tips forwards onto the frozen ground in front of him. He chases weakly after it and thumps downwards on his elbows. He coughs, pauses, doesn’t look up at the howling lack of cloud. 

“Excuse me, sir.” 

A woman, catalogues what remains of September’s conscious mind: a human woman, perhaps a little more than sixty years old, wearing a matching burgundy coat and hat burgundy, neat polished shoes in almost the same shade. Holding a long strip of leather, meant to hold in an animal - a small canine, perhaps snuffling at the gate of the graveyard, somewhere not here, somewhere else. September is somewhere else. He drags himself back together and says, primly, “Yes?” 

“You don’t look well.” This is perhaps an understatement; twenty years of observing this world and September knows how he looks, how he must look, without the looking - a new way of being which is the reason, for all this. He looks up. 

“I am not,” he allows. 

“Can I help?” the woman persists, pulling a cellphone from her pocket even as she says it. “Maybe there’s someone I can call?” 

September pulls himself up to kneeling, and then to standing. Without making a sound, the woman steps backwards. “You’re… you’re one of them.” 

September tips his head. “I was, ma’am.” 

She nods, slowly. “Are you sure you’re all right? I don’t like… well, I don’t like leaving you. Can I at least help you get somewhere?” 

Kindness, September notes; kindness ingrained deep. He wishes for his notebook. “I am where I am supposed to be,” he says, heavily, and seeing she seems to expect something more, he adds, “Someone is coming for me.” 

“Oh.” She stares at him, confusion changing her features for a moment. “Oh. Well, you shouldn’t stay out for long in the cold, okay?” 

She walks away, then, whistling for the creature, but turns to look at him several times on her way out of the cemetery, lingering at the gate for a few moments before she goes. 

Walter appears thirty-six minutes later, when the sun has moved somewhat in the winter sky and September can bear to look above the horizon. 

“September,” Walter says, quickly moving across to him. “I was worried, it’s so cold out - I tell you, I’m not used to being the one doing the looking after.” 

September submits to Walter helping him up, to being guided gently between the lines of graves. He stumbles again, flinches at the sight of clear sky. “I cannot,” he begins, and stops, breathing raggedly, aware of the snow on his boots and the chill of the air on his uncovered head and the great uncovered blue above and then nothing but breathing, breathing. 

“September,” Walter says, quickly, quietly. “Hush. It’s okay. It’s all right.” Unable to speak, September holds up an outstretched hand and Walter grips it. “I know, I know. But you will feel better than this, I promise you. The drugs they gave you are still in your body. It’ll hurt like this for a while but it _will_ get better. Come on. Let’s get you somewhere safe.” 

September nods. Although Walter has not asked him for an explanation, he feels obscurely that one is due. “I was revisiting,” he manages to say with difficulty. “I was revisiting the site of old mistakes.” 

Walter glances behind them, at the headstone. September was here when they placed Peter’s body beneath the frozen earth; he did not understand the cold so well, then. “You and me both,” Walter says at last, picking up September’s hat, and they go on.  
  
---|---  
*     
  
Nina is Etta’s grandmother. Peter has begun to tell her a little about Elizabeth Bishop, about his beautiful, loving, creative, grieving mother; Olivia has spoken about her own early childhood to Etta, a very little about her mother, in brief moments, in tiny flashes. She thinks that Etta understands, in her little-girl way, that these stories are important. But Nina, who visited Olivia in the hospital after the birth and held the baby with the ferocity of flesh and blood, sends presents every birthday and Christmas, has no dimness about her edges. 

Walter has been gone for two months when Olivia goes to New York. With no conscious thought, she finds her feet leading her across the city to Massive Dynamic. When she enters, the people at the reception recognise her, call Nina without her asking; in a few minutes Nina herself is there, enveloping her in a hug. “Olive, dear,” she says into Olivia’s hair. “It’s so good to see you. Shall I take you to lunch?” 

Olivia says, “If it’s inconvenient…” 

Nina waves her away. “You’re never inconvenient, Olive.” With practised ease, her appointments are moved, shuffled and cancelled altogether. She snaps her cellphone shut and looks brightly up at Olivia. “Where shall we eat? You decide.” 

They go to a little Italian place not far away where they’ve been before. Olivia orders carbonara and smiles to herself as Nina flirts with the waiter. And then after lunch they go for a long walk, heading in the direction of the river with the sounds of the city low and comfortable around them. 

“All Etta says these days is Nina did this and Nina said that,” Olivia says, after a while. Her daughter springs to life for a moment in her mind’s eye: blonde, bright and irrepressible. “I called you Ms. Sharp until I graduated high school.” 

Olivia’s still laughing; it’s not accusatory, but Nina grows serious, a tiny smile taking a few moments to form on her face. “They always say you’re softer on your grandchildren,” she says, gently. “Perhaps I wasn’t… with you, and with Rachel. But…” 

Olivia shakes her head. “You were… what I needed at the time.” She means it; Olivia’s memories of her childhood with Nina have returned over time, as though her past is a photograph with a double exposure. “And I’m grateful for everything you’re doing for Etta.” 

“None of that, Olive,” Nina snaps. “Don’t thank me. Take it as your due, you and Etta both.” They’re still walking along the river, Nina’s stride as determined as ever. But she pauses for a moment, softening in the gleam of the bright spring sun. “Now. This has been very nice, Olivia, and we should do it more often. But you came to talk about Walter, didn’t you.” 

It’s useless trying to be evasive around Nina, Olivia knows from experience. “It terrifies me,” she says, honest to match Nina’s honesty, “that people can just… disappear. Peter believes that Walter isn’t ever coming back. If that’s so, and there’s no reason, no explanation…” 

Nina lets her trail off. When she speaks, it’s with a careful, neutral tone. “I was very impressed that despite Walter’s lifetime of lack of consideration for others, Peter managed to teach him to leave a note when he went out.” 

Olivia considers. “You think…” 

“We may never see Walter again,” Nina says. “We’ve done - what we can. We won’t report him missing to the authorities until we’ve done everything in our power, and to date the search has been very thorough. I think I agree with Peter in any case. Walter wouldn’t go, not now” - not now, Olivia thinks, not now his family have brought him the humanity he was searching for all of his life - “unless he had to go. But there will be something. Some clue. Some message. And whatever there is, you’ll find it.” 

“I’m trying,” Olivia says, still honest. “But… it’s hard. It’s always hard, but this time, it just seems…” 

“Olive.” Nina looks up at Olivia, her expression suddenly unreadable. “Send Etta to me for a while. We’ll have a good time. And you and Peter will be free to…” 

To live like we lived before; Olivia thinks: from minute to minute, clue to clue. The thought is simultaneously attractive and exhausting. “But,” she begins, and then firmly presses her lips together. Nina will take Etta to the movies; she’ll draw pictures with her; she’ll teach her to make cupcakes. She’ll tell her every day how perfect, wanted and loved she is. 

“Thank you, Ms. Sharp,” she says, quietly, and Nina squeezes her hand, her eyes bright in the afternoon sun. 

| 

For now, “Donald O’Connor” is an alias rather than a name; September thinks of himself, when he thinks of himself, as one of the original twelve. But it was a gift, and the framed poster of _Singin’ in the Rain_ was a gift, both from Walter. He called it a birthday gift - it was September’s name-month and in nearly all senses, the start of a new human being - but he gave it anew with every careless “Donald” that dropped from his lips. 

September is standing at the window of his apartment when Olivia steps in. She stays framed by the doorway for a few moments, taking in the space with clear eyes. 

“September,” she says, at last, and September nods to himself; she understands. She could have chosen to take Nina Sharp’s name; she could have chosen to take Peter’s, but she chose to hold on to what she has nonetheless always been. 

“You should learn to lock your door.” And then, a little hesitantly: “Unless you were going somewhere?” 

September shakes his head. “I have nowhere to go.” 

It was meant as a mere truthful remark, but September notices the closed-off expression that passes across her face. Henrietta Bishop has been missing for three months and Olivia has come back to New York. Silently, he turns and reaches upwards for a bottle. He knows what she chooses to drink through long observation and he is grateful for her kindness in not bringing attention to that fact. He pours the whisky into two tumblers and hands her one, and they both knock back their glasses as though the moment were choreographed. 

After that there’s nothing else. Olivia sets the glass down and starts to walk around the apartment, picking up items, putting them down again. There are more gifts from Walter, books and DVDs, and some furniture September has had delivered for himself. Walter is kind and the Bishop family are well-off, even now - Walter’s shares in Massive Dynamic, left alone for years, have accumulated steadily in value - but September thought it was time to try and begin. His own people have provided for him by the simple expedient of placing a bank account in the past; in the present day, the compound interest is enough. They are still, even though his hair is growing in dirty blonde and the whisky volatiles are lingering pleasantly in his nose, _his own people_. 

Olivia pauses on the DVD left out on the couch, the case slipping so it has nearly fallen in the gap between the cushions. She picks it up, reads the title - _The Blues Brothers_ \- and then sets it down. And then she turns and focuses on the poster on the wall, and then looks back at September. “You and Walter have been watching musicals?” 

“Yes.” September looks at her. “Walter has been… Walter has been helping me. To understand this, what I have now become.” 

Olivia sits roughly down on the couch, her face turned away from him. Her shoulders begin to shake and September is at a loss for how to react; engaged in the battle not to be consumed by his own emotions, he has not yet understood how to deal with others’. He sits beside her, and he hopes that she understands that observation can be a kindness. “Olivia…” 

She turns to him and she’s laughing. She’s laughing silently and there are tears in her eyes and September, who has seen so many human faces from so many disparate and desperate angles, understands that there is an edge of something else here, something brittle and dangerous as glass. But she laughs and she holds out her hand, and September takes it. 

“Musicals,” she says, after a minute, and wipes her eyes, and he finds her a tissue. “Thank you, September.” 

Later, September will think of this as the first gift he gave another human being. This memory will be taken from her, along with any trace of the plan, but he will remember this single moment where she was not quite happy, but he had made her forget. 

It will be September’s name-month again before he realises that they are probably not coming back.   
  
*     
  
With Etta’s hand held tightly in hers, Olivia could never have done it; with Etta at daycare, and an alarm set on her phone for five minutes before she has to go pick her up, Olivia still couldn’t have done it. 

But Etta is in New York. Tomorrow she and Nina are going to the zoo, to see the lions. Olivia sits on the edge of her and Peter’s bed, in Boston under a glowering sky. She gets up to close the window and sits back down. She’s rolling the glass vials between her palms, passing them from hand to hand when Peter comes in. 

“Do you think,” she says, without looking up. “Do you think _they_ will know where Walter is?” 

She lifts the tubes so the orange liquid inside glows in the electric light. 

Peter stops short. “Is that…” 

“Cortexiphan.” Olivia looks back down. “I went down to Walter’s lab today. I found them in the basement, all neatly labelled. Did you know cortexiphan has a shelf-life of one hundred and twenty-seven years?” 

“Firstly,” Peter says, waving his hands, “no, I didn’t, and secondly, it _doesn’t matter_ because you are not going to…” 

Olivia looks up at him and he stops talking. Outside the window, the wind wuthers, and the rain begins to make spatter patterns on the glass. 

“Peter,” Olivia says, very gently, “you know they might. If she doesn’t” - Peter doesn’t have to ask who she is - “then Walternate might. Or the other Broyles. Or,” she hesitates for a moment, “or your mother. And even if they don’t know, then that’s something else we know we’ve done, and we can go on searching for him here.” 

Peter shakes his head. “Liv, no. It’s dangerous. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it might be more dangerous without Walter. He’s the one who invented the damn stuff. He at least understands how it works. Who were you thinking was going to administer it, me?” 

“Actually, I thought Astrid could do it. I watched the old tapes, I made some notes,” Olivia says, distantly. “I was at the lab for quite a while.” 

“We don’t know what’s on the other side any more,” Peter argues. “Since the bridge was closed, anything could have happened.” 

Olivia nods. “And don’t you want to know what did?” 

“Yes, but that’s not the point,” Peter begins, and Olivia knows at that moment that it will only be a matter of time before she has him; he’s Walter’s son, and in its own muted way, the spirit of scientific enquiry is alive in him. She places the vials in the refrigerator for safekeeping, so they gleam ominous and clear above shelves of eggs, milk and apples. 

Astrid, coming to hear of the plan while sitting on Olivia’s kitchen counter with her feet swinging, shares Peter’s objections. But oddly, Olivia finds fewer defences against her look of concern.. “Are you sure, Olivia?” she asks. “Without Walter or the Bureau for support, it won’t be an easy… experiment.” 

The delicacy of her phrasing makes Olivia smile for a second. “It’s important to me,” she says at last. “And I’m choosing to do it, Astrid - it’s not that Peter is asking me to do this. I want to.” 

Astrid nods, thinking. “We should administer the drug somewhere sterile,” she says at last. “I think Massive Dynamic is our best bet; Nina will be able to provide the facilities. And then I think we should go to Battery Park. It’s safe, it’s not likely to be built over, and if you don’t see their Liberty Island, we’ll know something has gone wrong or the cortexiphan has gone bad or something.” 

“It has a shelf life of one hundred and twenty-seven years,” Olivia says again, and smiles; even to her own ears, she sounds like Walter. “You mean, you’ll help?” 

Astrid nods, again slowly. “Don’t make me regret it, Olivia, please.” 

Nina is the last member of the trinity of concern. But she makes no comment, ordering junior scientists to set up one of the Massive Dynamic labs and arrange for a drip for the cortexiphan. As a final touch, she has the room cleared so no one remains but Peter, Astrid and herself. “Olive, if you must do this,” she says, finally, her lips pressed together, “I am glad you came to me.” 

Olivia squeezes her hand, and doesn’t let go as Astrid prepares to inject her with the drug. In contrast with every nightmare she’s ever had about this, it feels like nothing going into her veins - like sugar water or vaccination - and when Astrid draws away looking worried, Olivia is able to give her a reassuring smile and say _I’m fine_. In the nightmares, she reflects, it isn’t a ordinary city morning with the clear daylight leaking in comfortably familiar at the windows, and Peter and Astrid aren’t there, sitting on hard plastic chairs with matching auras of tension. 

“Olivia, are you sure,” Peter tries, one last time, as she takes a breath and stands up. 

Olivia places a hand on his arm. “I’ll be fine, Peter.” 

Astrid meets her eyes and mouths, _good luck_. And just like that, they’re driving through the midmorning traffic, trailed by Nina’s entreaties to be careful. They walk across Battery Park with Astrid leading the way, her trained eyes scanning for anything that might interfere. Olivia comes to rest on a bench by the water, with the world tipping around her so Peter catches her arm and she pauses for a moment, feeling the sudden lurch of the drug inside her body. 

“Are you all right?” Peter asks, urgently. “What do you see?” 

_Shadows_ , Olivia wants to say. There is a man sitting beside her on the bench. 

| 

In the darkness in the apartment in the early morning, September leans against the counter and breathes. The first of the rush hour traffic is slipping past the windows, lifting layers of slush and spraying and packing them back down. 

Listlessly, he opens cupboards and peers inside them; he is hungry, but has not eaten for several days. The cupboards are full of dried noodles. Outside his apartment, he thinks, loyalists and natives alike must continue to sell, buy and eat groceries. There are children living in the apartment above his who do not remember life before the invasion. He closes the cupboard doors again and walks across the room into the dimness, picks up the note on the mat. It is the latest in a sequence of notes that have come through his door - only the Resistance send handwritten notes, or, indeed, know where he lives - and September has ignored all of them. 

Walter had asked for a sign of forgiveness; September has returned from eastern Massachusetts in the freshening dawn, thinking deliberately of nothing, counting his own breaths, and has not known whom or what to ask. 

He stands there a few moments more, tapping his foot, thinking. Then he shrugs his coat back on, picks up his keys and goes back out, the snow not yet melted off his boots. He half-walks, half-runs down the steps and lands on both feet at once in an icy puddle, shakes the drops impatiently out of his hair, keeps on moving. A flower seller just setting up for the day turns to look at him in surprise as he almost-sprints past. “Getting to confession before the rush?” 

_Confession_ \- September takes a moment to understand, and nods to himself as he does. Of course, it must be Sunday now, long past midnight, and in the far distance he thinks he may hear the sound of bells. He slows to a walk on the irregular steps into the subway, considers leaping the turnstile and thinks better of it. He finds a MetroCard in his coat pocket and then stops entirely, leaning against the wall, just breathing. His fingers close on the smooth neck of a bottle, then on a slim volume. He takes his hands out of his pockets and clasps them and breathes. 

There was a New Testament in a hotel room, which he stole before he understood what stealing was. He borrowed and read the King James version, rolling the words around like marbles in his mouth, saying them to the shower water and softly to the open window. He read the Tao Te Ching in translation. Once, a long time ago, he observed the reading of the Bhagavad Gita but it counsels patience and time, of which he has none and too much. The subway train rattles into the station with a sound like something dying. September hangs loosely off one of the poles, moving with the rhythm of the car, not falling. He has more natural grace than any twenty-first century human, and at one time, he could not fall; not even if he wanted. 

In Battery Park, down by the water, he sits on a bench in the icy cold and pulls the bottle, the book and the MetroCard from his pockets. He has read the book and walked the city streets and now he is trying alcohol like Olivia taught him. Someone, perhaps the previous owner, left the half-size bottle of vodka in one of his kitchen cupboards and the clean burn of spirit in his mouth is one of the few things he experienced in his former life. He drinks it neatly and cleanly because it is neat and clean: clear, like the harbour water. He does not expect to need the card again. 

“Bit early in the day to be starting, innit?” asks a dog walker. 

_British_ , September thinks; _female, student, unimportant._ Nevertheless: _here_. “Yes,” he answers. 

The woman nods. “Hey, fair enough, mate.” 

She goes on walking. Seagulls rise and call over the water, break the surface in a series of splashes. September has taken the boy from the hiding place and given him warm clothes and children’s books and comfortable shoes; taken him to the kind human family where he will be safe; kissed his forehead helplessly, left him there; and now the harbour is clean and clear and bright and the water, fathomless and welcoming. Walter had warned him, peripherally, of this, in between introducing him to cinema and Red Vines and helping devise a plan to save them all. “A whole life without emotions,” he said, waving a hand around in characteristic exuberance, “and now, suddenly… I don’t know how you do it.” 

September is tired. 

He did not bring the child to his apartment - he thought, obscurely, that to do so would break his resolve and something of his inner self as well - and he has not slept. Experimentally, he opens the book to any page and reads: _not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man_. In twenty years as one of the twelve, he observed Bible readings and crucifixions and Christmas trees and war and peace and oral sex, and he does not understand. 

“You sure you’re okay, mate?” This is the dog walker, coming in the other direction. “It is kind of chilly out here.” 

September nods, and remembers to say, “Thank you.” 

“No problem.” She clicks her tongue and the dog bounds after her. September watches the two of them wander away into the middle distance, and then something changes in his peripheral vision, and there is something strange and filtered about the sound of the water. He turns around. Olivia is sitting beside him.  
  
*     
  
For a moment Olivia doesn’t dare move, as though she might startle the apparition. There is a translucency to him: through the twin blurs of his outstretched hands she can make out the dim shadows of something beyond.

| 

September sits perfectly still. He saw visions in the last stages of the experimentation. Whatever happens now, happens.  
  
“You’re not who I expected,” Olivia says at last.

| 

Her voice is the same.  
  
He doesn’t look familiar, and neither do the shapes of the world she can see behind - and through - him. She see echoes and gaps where she thought to see gleaming copper.

| 

“Neither,” he says slowly, “was I expecting you.”  
  
“Who are you?” Olivia asks.

| 

He smiles at her; he can’t help it in the same way he cannot, now, help breathing.  
  
Peter knows enough to have fallen silent. He sits cross-legged on the ground in front of the bench, his eyes on the space where he sees no one.

| 

“My name is September.”  
  
“September,” Olivia repeats.

| 

September breathes in and says, “I am not the one that you once knew.” And, as he inclines his head, a feeling of wrongness stirs beneath his skin. “You are not the one I knew, nor the other.”  
  
Peter inhales sharply and mouths, _ask if he knows me_. “Do you know Peter…” Olivia begins.

| 

September resolved long ago to speak the truth to them, and he does it now with the care and attention they are due.  
  
Peter stares in surprise as Olivia repeats what she hears, using cadence and accent not her own.

| 

“Peter Bishop. I was an Observer. I do not know if you remember me. I saved your life in the lake.”  
  
The chord of their voices reminds Peter of meeting the Observer by the water.

| 

September remembers all he has been: everything that has brought him here, from the moment he dropped his hat and dove into the lake.   
  
“Does he know where Walter is?” Peter asks. “Olivia, please, ask” - and she does, reaching out for Peter’s hand as she does.

| 

September considers the next question for some time. “No. Either he would not tell me, or he has gone where I cannot follow yet.”   
  
Olivia shakes her head. “He doesn’t - but he knew who you meant.”

| 

September puts his head in his hands for a moment, and Olivia looks at him with understanding.  
  
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says.

| 

He holds out his hands in response to that kindness.  
  
For a moment, it seems as though they could touch.

| 

For a moment, it seems as though they could touch.  
  
Olivia leans back, sighing.

| 

September lets his hands drop. “And I am sorry for yours.”  
  
He’s starting to fade away. Olivia looks at the stranger with intent, trying to memorise the details of him before he quite disappears.

| 

She’s starting to fade away. September spent years observing Olivia and it hurts him in a way that’s still jagged and caustic that memory can be fallible. In a few seconds, he will not be able to bring her perfectly to mind.  
  
Peter says, “Is he gone?” and Olivia nods, suddenly consumed by the silence.

| 

September watches the clouds move over the water, and puts the MetroCard back in his pocket.  
  
*     
  
“We could try it again,” Olivia suggests, and Peter, Nina and Astrid say: “ _No_.” 

After that, Olivia can’t speak. Over Nina’s half-hearted objections, they take Etta back with them to Boston, and even her irrepressible chatter is muted during the journey. Olivia can’t account for her own silence: it could be the cortexiphan, making her shudder as it slowly works its way out of her body, but she wonders if it’s just the memory of the figure on the bench, shadowed within and without. They reach home just as night is falling and Peter puts Etta to bed without further delay, bringing her to Olivia for a goodnight kiss, but no words. 

It’s only when they’re getting ready for bed, the lights low and the drapes closed, that Olivia can say, “Peter…” 

“Hey.” Peter turns to look at her. 

“I guess,” Olivia says, with difficulty, “the cortexiphan was bad.” 

Peter laughs. “If not bad, then different,” he agrees. “You never crossed over, did you?” 

Olivia considers. “Not… in the same way,” she says, then, quizzical and tentative: “September?” 

Peter’s eyes unfocus, as though he’s delving into memories that he hasn’t had cause to look at lately. “They were… we called them the Observers. You don’t remember?” 

Olivia shakes her head. Her memories of Peter’s original universe have been fading faster since the bullet that saved the world, since Etta’s birth, as though violence and pain have turned her inside out and back again, grounded her into this body she was born in. 

Peter nods, understanding. “At nearly all the fringe events we were involved with, you’d see one of them, in the background, just watching. I got the impression they were kind of like us in a way – a science team, investigating.” He smiles suddenly. “They weren’t supposed to get involved. I think there must have been twelve of them but I never met them all. The one we saw all the time, that was September. 

“He was… just this guy, you know? He never talked all that much. Tall guy, kind of serious. He and Walter used to go for milkshakes, I know it’s weird. September liked sweet things almost as much as Walter does. I guess you’d call them friends. What did your guy look like?” 

Olivia considers. “He looked… like he’d been sick. I mean, really sick, for a long time.” 

Peter shakes his head. “I don’t know why that would be. I don’t know if they even do… you know, get sick, feel pain.” 

“If they didn’t then, I think they do now,” Olivia says softly. 

“They weren’t supposed to get involved,” Peter says again, and smiles suddenly. “They weren’t all that great at not getting involved. There was another one, August, who fell in love with a human woman and nearly got killed because of it. And September – well, he saved my life. Mine and Walter’s, when I was a child. He never explained why, though Walter must have asked him a dozen times in front of me and September would just give him this little smile, like it was a private joke they had.” 

Olivia nods. “But he didn’t know where Walter is.” 

Peter can only nod in return. That is the point after which they don’t have anything else to say; after a while, Olivia settles herself down on her pillows, and closes her eyes. 

She doesn’t expect to sleep, but she dozes off and dreams in black and white, of faraway places. It is around three in the morning when she wakes with a start, asleep to alert in less than a second: something or someone is moving around downstairs. Moving silently as to not wake Peter, she pulls on a robe and creeps down the stairs, following the edge of light below the kitchen door. 

Gently, she pushes open the door and something drops with a clatter. “Olivia! You startled me!” 

In a bowl on the counter, something bubbles white. On the stove, something curls at the edges. At the table, Etta is carefully drizzling strawberry sauce on a pancake in the shape of a shooting star. 

“Sorry,” Olivia and Astrid say together, and Astrid chuckles. 

“Etta couldn’t sleep. She came down into the living room, where I couldn’t sleep either.” Olivia glances through into the other room and sees a discarded novel next to the couch she had made up for Astrid to sleep on; the position of the bookmark suggests she’s been awake quite a while. “I figured we might as well make good use of the time.” 

“How did you do this without making any noise?” Olivia asks, quietly but not whispering. 

“Special Agent Farnsworth, Federal Bureau of Investigation, good to meet you.” Astrid shakes her hand, wickedly. “I’m just better at stealth than you. And…” She pauses. “I think it’s what Walter would have done.” 

Olivia nods, slowly. “Is there…” 

“Plenty to go around,” Astrid says, so Olivia sits herself down next to her daughter and finds a plate. Astrid bustles around, adding a little more flour to the batter, finding lemon juice and sugar. She knows the kitchen as well as Olivia does. It is a comfortable silence, until Astrid is turning in circles looking for a whisk and it floats out of its drawer, across the kitchen and hovers a few inches from Astrid’s outstretched hand. 

Astrid snaps it out of the air. “Olivia…” 

“I wish you could just turn it off,” Olivia says, wearily. “Escape into…. this.” She waves a hand to indicate the warm room, the pancakes, Etta sitting quietly next to her. “It’s easier than it used to be.” 

Astrid turns off the gas and sits down beside her. “Yeah, I know.” 

“There was a time when I honestly thought I wouldn’t give a damn if Walter disappeared for good.” Olivia leans back in her chair. “He did terrible things, Astrid. You know. But now…” She’s looking at Etta, now doing sugar smiley faces to complement Astrid’s handiwork. “Two worlds in every cell in her body. Two worlds inside her head. And me, Peter, Walter, we’re all a part of her. You can’t… ” She shrugs. “Well.” 

Astrid reaches over to squeeze her hand. “I could try and do one shaped like a heart, if that would make you feel better? Or a hydrogen molecule. Or an F for Fringe Division.” 

Olivia laughs and squeezes back. “Anything you want to give me will be perfect.” 

Astrid goes back to the stove. Olivia steals a bite of Etta’s decorated pancake, and gets up to whisk the batter, lovingly, by hand. 

| 

September has reached a point where he can look at the sky without seeing the smogs of centuries hence. But it is the humanity of the scorched battlefield, hard-won human in the same way as Olivia was, with the drugs and the technology burned cleanly out of his nerves. Sometimes he still answers the door before the knock. 

The bolts slip back, one by one, and then the door shifts slowly open. “Mr. Weiss.” 

Dripping profusely on the threshold, Sam Weiss does not look surprised to see him, which is heartening; it is suggestive that he is, at last, expected. “Mr. O’Connor.” There’s an ironic twist to Sam’s lip. “Or is it still September?” 

“September,” he agrees. “What can I do for you?” 

“First of all, you can let me in to warm up,” Sam says, dropping the mock-formality. September lets him in, obligingly. “It’s perishing out there. Can I use your bathroom?” 

September nods and gestures in the right direction. He is still standing in the middle of the room when Sam returns, running a towel roughly through his hair. 

“September.” Sam sits down on the couch and continues drying his ears, determinedly. “I have a job for you. I know you’re depressed, but we need you right now.” 

“I am not depressed,” September murmurs, and Sam raises his eyebrows. 

“When did you last go out? No, don’t answer that. In the woods, way upstate, we’ve found something and we need someone to tell us what it is.” 

“I do not engage with the Resistance.” 

Sam puts down the towel. “Because you don’t want to resist?” 

September experiences, only for the second or third time, a desire to roll his eyes skywards. “Because I have been blood-tagged. Like _cattle_.” 

There is a moment, then, where they both pause at the unexpected vehemence of that. 

Sam sighs. “Just the two of us, then. We won’t involve anyone else, make it worth the risk.” 

September merely inclines his head. 

Sam stares at him for a few moments. Voice softening, he says, “I’ve heard all the rumours. You don’t have to tell me about it. We can work on getting the thing removed, maybe?” 

“That would be more dangerous than letting it remain,” September says. He is breathing through his mouth, he realises suddenly; something sounds like the ocean in his ears. 

“May I see?” Sam asks. His hand is drifting in a strange direction, September notices belatedly. It comes within a few inches of the back of September’s neck – a shattering memory unfolds inside his mind, of the time when he could catch bullets out of the air – and then his reflexes kick in. In a second he’s jumped away with his back to the wall and his breath coming heavily as though torn cloth. 

“Oh,” Sam says, his arms dropping to his sides. 

Without any clear knowledge of what he’s doing, September has placed a protective hand on his own nape, covering the scar. 

“I think you probably are depressed,” Sam says again, “and I think you’re very anxious, and I think it’d be crazy if you weren’t. Do you want to sit down?” 

Without taking his eyes off Sam for a second, September does. 

“But like I said, we don’t have all that much time right now.” Sam stands up, with deliberate slowness. “It sucks, I’m afraid. Listen, September” – and to September’s surprise he gets on his knees in front of September’s feet – “what was done to you…” 

“What was done, was done,” September says obstinately, interrupting. 

“Okay, listen.” Sam turns over his hands, offers him open palms and a fierce expression. “You are a human being. Do you understand what that means? It’s important for all of us that you do. What they did to you, whatever anyone does to you, they don’t just get to do it. No one can touch you if you say no. Whether that gets respected is a different thing. But say it.” 

September breathes. “No,” he says very quietly. 

“Say it.” Sam’s hands have drifted again. 

“No!” September says, and the shameful protective gesture is back. He was one of the twelve, once, impervious. He breathes in and out. 

Sam’s eyes are kind, then pragmatic. “Here endeth the lesson. I think I was speaking of your unique combination of talents.” 

September sighs. “What do you need from me?” 

“Coffee,” Sam says, and he’s already going to the kitchen to find it. September finds it easier to sit down and let him. “Seriously, coffee - do you even have any coffee?” 

“No.” 

“Yeah, you do,” Sam says, taking the jar from the cupboard and waving it through the doorway, “ground beans and decaf.” 

“Decaf?” 

“September, focus.” From the kitchen comes the sound of boiling water. “Cayuga. It’s this little nowhere town up towards the Canadian border and there looks like some sort of abandoned Observer tech out there. I need you to come out with me and figure out what it is and if it’s worth stealing.” 

“All right,” September says, and finds himself being handed a steaming mug. It smells unusual, but good. “I’ll come.” 

Sam nods. “You’ll be all right, you know,” he says, and the warmth of the mug in September’s hands, the brief touch on his arm, is a comfort.  
  
*     
  
Olivia is stirring a pot on the boil and keeping an eye on the window – Etta is playing on the grass in the sunshine, building a Technicolor castle from a set of blocks – when she is suddenly aware that something in the air is different. The sauce bubbles gently, undisturbed, and there’s no sound other than the hum of the gas, but she trusts her instincts. Moving silently, she opens the door and looks out into the yard. The last of the morning dew is twinkling in the sun, and Etta is concentrating hard on getting a tower to stay standing. But someone is standing there quietly who wasn’t there before. 

“How did you get in?” Olivia snaps out. Her hand goes automatically to her hip, her fingers closing on nothing. The yard is fenced off entirely, with a locked side-gate. “Etta, honey, get inside.” 

Etta looks up at the sharpness of her tone and then obeys, scurrying into the kitchen to hide behind Olivia’s legs. The woman walks up to them both with careful, unhurried steps and Olivia is aware again of a wrongness like metal in the air. The woman is older than Olivia but otherwise of indeterminate age, wearing a black dress which seems to have a green sheen in the sunlight; Olivia, blinking, realises the same is true of the woman’s heavy braids of hair. 

“Good morning, Agent Dunham,” she says, calmly. “Good morning, Ms. Bishop.” 

It takes Olivia a second to realise she’s referring to Etta. She’s opening her mouth to say something when something clatters in the room behind her and she takes a step back. Peter is wandering into the kitchen, towelling his hair. 

“Olivia,” he calls, “do you know where my… oh.” 

The woman smiles. “Peter. It’s good to see you again.” 

To Olivia’s surprise, Peter comes to stand beside her and smiles back at the woman, holding out his hand to her. “Olivia, this is, ah. This is August.” 

August bows her head. Olivia takes an involuntary step backwards as their eyes meet, and then she’s letting Peter bring the stranger into the house, as though all this were quite ordinary. They sit at the kitchen table, facing each other. From long practice, Olivia can tell Peter is alert but genuinely relaxed; taking heart, she lets Etta go back to her blocks, and seats herself so she can go on glancing out of the window. August drinks tea that Peter makes, lifting the mug with both hands and breathing in appreciatively. 

After she has taken her first sip and set the mug on the table, Peter says: “Something’s happened to September, hasn’t it.” 

It’s a statement, not a question, but August inclines her head. “Not exactly. September has… withdrawn himself from the investigation.” 

“So it was September that Olivia saw?” Peter asks. 

“In a way.” August stares gently at him. “Perhaps it would be easier to show you.” 

They’re somewhere else. There is no blur of the light, no metaphorical fanfare. They’re floating in midair above midtown Manhattan, the sky uncoiling in grey cloud above them, the street grid laid out like patchwork below. Everything is smooth, polished surfaces; everything is hard as block metal. And then they’re on the street, jostled by people in black hats and suits, each one bald, with no eyebrows, carrying an identical briefcase. Olivia turns around on her heel and spots ordinary humans scurrying, heads down, keeping to the shadows. It’s hard to breathe. 

“The air,” August says distantly. “It is being degraded. The average human lifespan is forty years.” 

They’re in the kitchen in Boston, in the sun. Olivia is on her feet in a moment, but Etta is still building with her blocks, unperturbed. 

“What,” Peter says, hands curling into fists on the table, “was that?” 

“ _That_ is something that must be.” August’s voice is still level but shot through with emotion. 

Peter says, “You mean - that’s the future?” 

August lifts a hand. “That is _now_. A maybe now; a perhaps. But nevertheless it must happen, somewhere, everywhere. We cannot interfere. We can offer them nothing but the smallest of things; we can offer nothing but kindness.” 

“Them?” Olivia is saying, but Peter gets in first. “Walter.” 

August bows her head, then lifts her eyes to meet Olivia’s. “The man you saw…. he and Walter have made a decision for the betterment of all. They do this for all of us. More than that I am not permitted to say.” 

“Wait,” Peter says. “Walter, our Walter - is that where he is? And if that’s September…” He pauses. “Okay, we’re with the programme on how there’s more than one of everything. But not you. Not him - that’s not how it works.” 

“He, too, is a perhaps.” August pauses again, and Olivia is taken aback for a moment by the shadows of grief on her beautiful face. With resolve, she goes on: “And although he does not know it, he is one of us and we must be kind. You see why I need your assistance. It should be self-explanatory.” 

From somewhere, she produces an envelope and places it on the table. Olivia picks it up and is surprised by the normality of it: an ordinary white paper envelope, sealed with red wax. 

August stands up. “Thank you for the tea.” 

“But Walter,” Peter is saying, and August is shaking her head, her hand coming to her mouth. 

“Wait,” Olivia says. Instinctively, she places a hand on August’s arm and is surprised that August turns naturally, like anyone else might. “Who _are_ you, really?” 

August inclines her head slowly. “We are one of countless possible futures for humanity.” 

She opens the kitchen door and steps out. Olivia glances across at Etta, still playing quietly, and when she turns August has gone, leaving no footprints in the dew.

| 

“Soup!” Sam says, with satisfaction, as it heats up on the little spirit stove. “I haven’t seen it for months, not since people started hoarding. Thank you.” 

September smiles briefly, returns to investigating it with a wooden spoon. He understands that mushrooms can be one of many varieties of edible fungi; he wonders where the cream comes in. The last of the day’s warmth has gone. Night will not fall for another hour or so, but rather than fight the checkpoints after dark, they’ve elected to camp out under the trees, and September is enjoying the daylight still dappling deep green around his feet. 

Sam seems happy, too. He leans back on the camp stool, nearly overbalances, rights himself and then stretches out anyway, comfortable and lazy as a cat. “Good day’s work,” he says, patting the kitbag, and then groans a little, lifting his foot awkwardly. 

“How is your injury?” September asks. 

“Fine. Worth it.” Sam’s hand is still on the bag. Inside are all the components they have managed to remove from an Observer radio installation abandoned in the woods of upstate New York. September was able to quickly assess which of the parts would be valuable to the Resistance and which would not be worth their time to repair, and now everything is broken down, he is surprised by how little space the salvaged items take up. “Told you I needed your help,” Sam says. “You do seem to know all about it.” 

September has been around humans long enough to understand there is an unspoken question hanging there. “I was an engineer,” he volunteers, after a while. “Despite the… myriad failings, we do have a limited system of social structure. It was thought that the original science team should contain a diversity of past experience.” 

“An engineer, huh,” Sam says. “What sort of work? Don’t tell me, way too complicated for you to explain or me to understand.” 

September shakes his head and spreads his palms. “The first project on which I assisted, following my training, was… a bridge.” 

“A bridge!” Sam laughs. “Thought your people could just disappear and reappear wherever they wanted.” 

“It takes energy,” September says. “And while we - they can, in so doing they can only take what they can carry in their hands.” 

“I get it.” Sam nods. “A bridge over what?” 

“The Hudson,” September says, “although it will not always be named as such. Higher in its valley, where the water is more turbulent.” 

Sam nods. “How’re you doing, really?” 

Disoriented by the sudden change of tack, September returns to his soup for a few minutes. It is starting to bubble around the edges, so he pours it out into two mugs, letting the steam rise. Sam accepts his and takes a careful sip, but his eyes rising to meet September’s gaze are still expectant. It’s getting darker. 

“Walter told me,” September says, remembering, “that it would not always be like this.” 

“And he was right.” Sam looks up at him. “There’s no trick to being human, September. There’s work for you to do. Work till you get tired and you can’t think any more. And when you’re not doing that, get a library card. Look out of your window. We all get there in the end.” 

September nods. “It is not always safe…” 

Before his hand can go to his neck, Sam has understood. “I think you’d make a very good Resistance consultant, don’t you?” he says. “We’ll ask questions, you’ll be able to answer them. You’re valuable and we don’t have a whole lot of real value. And it’s not just your inside knowledge. That trick you pulled with the kid, for example - that was smart.” 

September says, “They are still transmitting every five days as I asked. But I fear…” 

“Yeah.” Sam’s voice is kind. “Small steps. Seriously, September, have you read any good books lately? Maybe you should start. Listen to music. Or pretend you’re still an anthropologist and take extensive notes on your own sex life. Just…” 

“Live,” September says. He remembers the black harbour water, and shivers. “Live, keep on living.” 

He stands up as he says it, begins to walk in a slow circle around their tiny camp. The car is hidden a few dozen metres from the road, and when night has quite fallen they will probably sleep for a few hours before returning to the city in the dawn light. “Your foot will need to be bound and cleaned,” September says abruptly. “And you should not put weight on it.” 

“It’s fine, really.” Sam gashed his foot on barbed wire during their quick march from the installation. It is the most benign human injury September has come across for a while. Nevertheless, he rummages for supplies, a support dressing and some alcohol-soaked wipes, and kneels beside Sam, supporting himself on the leaf-covered ground. He waits patiently for Sam to remove his boot and sock and begins to clean the wound. 

Sam hisses through his teeth at the alcohol sting and looks up at September. “That bridge of yours” - he is distracting himself - “were you proud of it?” 

Perhaps, September thinks, this is a tiny cruelty inflicted for what September was, and chose to do, before his reversion. “No,” he says. “I was not capable of pride.” 

He lets the bloodstained wipe fall. “But when I came here first, and ever since, every molecule of water in my body rose from the Hudson River. I am as much a part of New York as any human being has ever been.” 

Sam touches his hand, pushes it away, and September thinks he must be in pain. He is surprised to feel fingers intertwining with his and holding on tight. “Welcome home, September,” Sam says, and for a moment September does nothing but keep himself still and hold on to his awareness, of his own heartbeat, of Sam’s breathing, of the ground beneath his feet.  
  
*     
  
The single sheet of paper inside the envelope August left turns out to be a very familiar form of document.

| 

Because he finds comfort in it, September takes notes on everything he reads, watches and listens to. The notes are in a black leather-bound notebook that is similar but not the same as the one he used to use, and he writes in English.  
  
- _Vodka_ ("Vodka?" Astrid repeats. "What, they don't drink in the future? And I don't even want to get into the part where we have to fight a great battle in the far future with a shopping list. Why…") 

| 

- _Battlestar Galactica_ (September happened to observe the ending when it was originally on network television; years later, having seen the first few seasons, he is surprised at the genuine irritation this causes him)   
  
- _Campbell's soup, tomato and cream of mushroom_ (Olivia says, "Because when you can't do anything else, you can take a bath and eat hot soup.") 

| 

- _The Left Hand of Darkness_ , _A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch_ , _Catch-22_ (September knows the last of these is supposed to be comic, but they all make him cry in the same way: listlessly, without his really noticing, turning his pages below the light from the window)   
  
- _Noodles_ (Astrid says, “At least let’s get one of every kind,” and she and Olivia meticulously pick up every flavour the store carries, tip them into the cart, catch each other’s eye and start giggling while Peter and Etta look indulgently on) 

| 

- _So You Want To Be A Wizard_ (the woman behind the counter at the New York Public Library gives him a quiet smile and asks him if he's from the city originally: September says yes, remembering the icy-grey threads of metal crossing the river)   
  
- _Coffee_ ("Maybe we get regular and decaffeinated," Peter says. "The September I knew only drank decaf, I don't know why. I guess it was all the time he spent with Walter that inclined him to clean living.") 

| 

_-Darkness On The Edge of Town_ , _Horses_ , _Recovering the Satellites_ (and in the music, he feels the affirmation of belonging)   
  
- _Red Vines_ (Olivia puts the jar in the grocery cart, and for a moment the three of them stand there in silence; and then Peter says, “He’s not coming back.”) 

| 

- _An Atlas of A Difficult World _(he reads it on a cold day, sitting in the alcove, drinking decaf, and pauses on the last few lines with ice water creeping down his spine:__  
  
They pack the things with bubble wrap and tape and leave them in a basket on the front porch. In the morning it's gone. 

| 

_there is nothing else left to read /_

_there where you have landed, stripped as you are_  
  
*     
  
Peter’s first idea was a headstone next to his mother’s reading: “Walter Bishop, 1946 –". It made Olivia laugh, which was a good reason in itself, and since Etta’s birth Peter has been thinking about his mother more often, and for the first time, remembering her laughter, her dozen daily kindnesses, more than her death. Broyles, while sympathetic, points out that every amateur genealogist to notice a headstone like that in the cemetery will make further inquiries, which will not help Fringe Division to stay under the radar of the general public. In the end they decide to hold a memorial service, and place an obituary in the _Boston Globe_ ; the person on the phone who takes down the copy is either inattentive or kind, and does not comment on the phrasing of _Walter Bishop survives his son, Peter, his daughter-in-law Olivia and beloved grand-daughter Henrietta…_

The day of the service dawns bright and breezy, broken twigs and torn leaves spattering across the windows. Peter steps out of the shower, goes through into the bedroom, picks up items of clothing and places them down again. He holds up a tie and thinks, idly, that Walter will need help with his. He throws it down and goes downstairs barefoot with his shirt half-buttoned. 

In the kitchen, Olivia is sitting across the table from Etta, and because of the cushions that habitually live on Etta’s chair, they’re at eye level. “Oh,” Etta is saying, a note of uncertainty in her voice. “Gone? Forever?” 

They both have matching serious expressions, the frown sitting oddly on Etta’s little-girl features, and for a moment, Peter has an image of Etta aged thirteen, aged thirty, with all the family’s razor intelligence but tempered with Olivia’s grace and Walter’s joie de vivre. She will be perfect, Peter decides, and feels a little better. 

“Maybe not forever,” Olivia says, “but I don’t know how long it might be.” 

Peter leans against the door and listens as Olivia explains, so softly, so gently, that Etta’s grandfather is not dead, but she will, most likely, never see him again. 

“We’ll tell her the whole story later on,” Peter says quietly as Etta gets from the table and toddles into the other room. “She deserves to know it all.” 

Olivia nods, looking at Etta through the open doorway. From the expression on her face, she’s thinking about that other world, the place under shadow. 

“We could get her a dog,” Peter says suddenly. “We won’t have to tell her it went to live on a farm. It can go live with Walter.” 

Olivia laughs, and then falls silent. Moving impulsively, she kisses the corner of Peter’s mouth, and Peter leans into that caress. “Do you know what you’re going to say?” she asks a few minutes later, when he’s retrieved his tie and is tying it inexpertly and distractedly while also hunting for his shoes. 

Peter has been thinking about this for days, and has come no further than the traditional _devoted father_ and obvious _brilliant man_. He hopes and believes that those present now, after all these years, will understand that for Walter the latter came as easily as breathing and the first, after a life’s great battle. He looks up at Olivia and says, hesitantly, “I haven’t forgotten. I mean, I haven’t forgotten what Walter did to you and so many others. Do you want to…” 

Olivia considers. “Say this,” she says at last. “That after everything that had happened, after everything he had chosen to do - say that he tirelessly pursued his own redemption.” 

Peter nods and she straightens his tie. 

The memorial service is not crowded, and afterwards, there is no body to bury. But they go outside into the clear chilly air regardless, looking around them and blinking at the sudden brightness. Nina is crying, wiping at her eyes with a tissue Olivia has given her, holding a bunch of roses. 

“It reminds me of the other time,” she says thickly. “Oh, Peter, dear” - and Peter sinks in to the uncharacteristic hug she gives him, letting her hold him close for a moment. He’s thinking of his mother again, and Nina, and William Bell, and all the brilliant instances of flawed humanity Walter attracted to his side. 

There is another man there, at the edge of the dispersing crowd of mourners. Looking at him, Peter can’t say for sure whether he was there for the memorial service or not. He is leaning against a tree with his hands in his pockets, relaxed with sharp eyes. Peter turns to look for Olivia, to ask her if she’s seen, but Olivia is already starting in the direction of the line of trees. 

“Thank you for coming,” she’s saying, as Peter draws close enough to hear them. “I presume you are…” 

“Hello,” Peter says, and meets September’s answering smile. “Are you here to observe something important?” 

September inclines his head, halfway between _yes_ and _no_ ; he’s running a hand through his hair distractedly. “I have… withdrawn myself from the investigation,” he says at last. “But there is more than one type of importance. Your father… was a good man.” 

“Yes,” Olivia says, steadily. “He learned how to be.” 

Peter turns to face Olivia at that, suddenly overflowing with how much he loves her, and when he looks back he’s entirely unsurprised to find that they’re alone together. 

From the ground where he was standing, Olivia picks up a handful of white tulips and holds them out, translucent and beautiful, and still warm from September’s hands.

| 

When the phone rings with an unfamiliar number on the display, September answers it with, “This isn’t a secure line.” 

“September!” The voice on the other end is also unfamiliar, breathless and cracking. “Large flat thing, five panels, the display has these symbols and they’re, fuck, fucking hell, they’re _changing…_ ” 

“Touch the blue panel now,” September tells him, instinct taking over, “now the red, now the blue again, and again, and” - he snaps his fingers, once, twice - 

“ And what, for fuck’s sake?” 

\- thrice, “and hit the centre panel as hard as you can, now.” 

There’s a thud from the other side, a piercing electronic whine, then a voice broken with emotion, “God. It’s stopped. It’s stopped. They said, they said only to call you in an emergency but I thought being _blown up_ was…” 

Gently, September hangs up the phone and walks across to the window. For a few minutes, he takes deep breaths of the warm spring air and listens to the absence of explosion. Adrenaline threads through his nerves and drains away, and then he returns to the ordinary routine of the morning, the coffee, the mail. 

Someone has pushed a note through the door. _Checked the kid. All well._

September picks it up and puts it with the others. He cannot go back. They have been lucky so far; another visit to the tiny island in eastern Massachusetts will be one too many, and whatever quiescent Observer, perhaps also being punished, whose task it is to review the movements of the tag in his neck, will pass the message on to his superior, who will pass it further. And September has averted too many explosions to risk that, now. The handwriting is not Sam’s; it’s a shared duty. 

The coffee brews. 

After he sits down to drink it, pulling up the electronic _New York Times_ to scan the headlines, he takes out two Red Vines and eats them methodically, pulling the twists entirely apart and tying them in knots. It’s only after the second one has gone into his mouth that it occurs to him to look up and at the jar. It sits squat and unremarkable in the centre of the table, an ordinary glass jar with a silver lid. 

September sits perfectly still and observes the room carefully: the stirring dust in the morning sun, the warm spring air. His books piled on the edge of the couch; the cafetière still steaming on the counter. “I didn’t ask for this,” he says, after a while. There is no answer. 

Once he has finished the coffee, and read something of the news of the day ( _“Democratic Party defends against notions of figurehead elections” / “Transport links reopened with mainland Europe”_ ), he looks for his coat and boots and goes outside. It’s a beautiful day, with the trees lining the street clothed with blossom and boats drifting lazily past on the East River. 

The flower seller has set up a couple of blocks away, still in sight of the bridge. Although the depleted buckets suggest business has been brisk - September remembers, as though from a great distance, that spring, flowers, gifts and romantic love are typically correlated in human culture – the man is standing undisturbed, with a lit cigarette in his hand, the smoke drifting in the direction of the water. 

“Hey,” he says, as September catches his eye. “Don’t I see you around?” 

“Once, a long time ago,” September tells him conversationally, “a friend of mine believed that he could only go on - that he could undertake a great task that had been allotted him, uniquely, of all of humanity in the world at that time – only if he had a sign. He had asked for divine forgiveness for his past sins. He had asked God for a white tulip.” 

The man is looking rather shellshocked. September goes on, confidentially, “I don’t believe you will have any white tulips. I don’t believe what my friend believed, although he believed it and I believed in him. I have faith… in other things.” 

“Say,” the guy manages, “are you… okay in the head?” 

September gives him a long look. “I believe so. It is a work in progress.” 

Surprisingly, the man smiles. “Yeah, I’m fifty years old. I thought I was doing okay, too. Then they tell me we’ve been invaded by a bunch of bald guys from the future and do I want a tattoo made out of numbers, like we never read any history. Ain’t life crazy. Still.” The man looks at him quizzically. “You got someone… taking care of you?” 

September bows his head. “Yes.” 

The man nods. “Okay. That’s all right, then. What do you want?” 

There are no white tulips on the stall. September picks up white roses and red tulips and buys some of both, uplifted by the brightness of the colour. The man takes his money and gives most of it back to him. 

September walks slowly back along the riverbank, thinking of nothing but sunlight, breathing without thinking, the flowers spilling gloriously from his hands.  
  
**Author's Note:**

> This story contains some peripheral discussion of consent issues and oblique references to suicidality (as usual, if you would like more detail please feel free to get in touch). I recommend you read it from left to right, whole section by section, but it should make sense, I hope, down one column and then the other. But, hey, do what you like, je suis morte.
> 
> The title is better expressed as:
> 
> _you_  
>  _who fly with them_
> 
> _you who are neither_  
>  _before nor after_  
>  _you who arrive_  
>  _with blue plums_  
>  _that have fallen through the night_
> 
> From W.S. Merwin, “To The Light of September”.


End file.
